British warships 'Royal Oak', 'Acasta', 'Benbow', 'Superb' and 'Canada' in action at the Battle of Jutland

Explore this specially created collection of Royal Navy and Royal Marine records and discover your ancestor who participated in the largest naval battle of the First World War.

This specially curated collection of naval records has been put together from various service records from The National Archives and Naval and Military Press. Each record includes an image of the original document and a transcript of details found in the record. The details in each transcript can vary depending on the series, but most will include the following:

Name

Service number

Birth date

Birth place

Enrolment date

Rank

Regiment

Archive

Archive reference

Document description

The image will include further information about your ancestor. You can discover if your ancestor was promoted in rank and the names of the ships on which he served, as well as his dates of service. Other service records documented your ancestor’s home address, occupation prior to joining the service and full physical description.

Discover more about these records

This new collection has been specially created to bring together the names of those who participated in the battle of Jutland between 31 May and 1 June 1926. The collection is not comprehensive and there may be some gaps. It was created from the following series found at The National Archives in London.

ADM 159: Royal Marines, service records

ADM 188: Royal Navy Seamen, service records

ADM 196: Royal Navy officers, service records

ADM 240: Royal Naval Reserve officers, service records

ADM 377: Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, ratings’ service records

The collection also uses transcripts created by Naval and Military Press.

Battle of Jutland

The Battle of Jutland (known as the Battle of Skagerrak in Germany) was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy and the German Navy during the First World War. It was a collision of the world’s two largest naval powers, fought in Skagerrak, a strait on the North Sea off of the coast of Denmark. It was the largest naval battle of the First World War, with 250 ships and about 100,000 men. The British Royal Navy had the larger number of ships, 151 compared to Germany’s 99. The types of ships involved were battleships, cruisers, battlecruisers, destroyers and seaplane carriers. Of the total number of ships involved, 25 vessels were sunk: 14 British and 11 German. The battle also resulted is a large loss of life: 6,094 on the side of the British and 2,551 on the side of the Germans died.

King George VI

In the records, you can find the service record for King George VI. At the time of the Battle of Jutland, he was the Duke of York. The records show that ‘Bertie’, as he was known to his family, entered the service in January 1909. During the battle, he served on board the *HMS Collingswood*. After the battle, in a letter to his brother, the future King Edward VIII, he wrote that, ‘it was a great experience to have gone through and one not easily forgotten’.